Soo Line Locomotive

Hey, the blog is four years old this week...I just realized.

I have a few looks at a Soo Line, formerly Milwaukee Road GP38-2 locomotive. The model belongs to Brian Smith, but I've had it here for weathering for some time. It's actually the 2nd time I've weathered this Athearn Genesis model for Brian.  He told me he wanted it to be dirty, as in really dirty.  I wasn't happy with the way it turned out the first time so I asked him to let me have a 2nd crack at it.

I really like the look of this patched-out engine, and think one like it would be well-suited for the JSSX.  I've searched online a few times for one recently, but haven't been able to come up with one so far.

Soo Line simply painted out the Milwaukee Road logo in the orange portion of the long hood with black paint, which Athearn did. They also put the SOO reporting mark on the side of the cab of course.

No pictures of the previous weathering, but the problem was trouble with my old airbrush caused the spray to not be "fine" enough.  The spray from the airbrush was too coarse, leaving small specks on the model, rather than the fine mist that it should have been. I carefully removed all of that, and sprayed it again with much better results this time.

There's also some rust that has developed on the cab roof and at a couple of spots at the top of the long hood as well. Oh, and I don't have that troublesome old airbrush any more.

Headlights are on as the locomotive begins to leave the JSSX maintenance track

Okay, so I cheated a bit and used the 5-finger turntable to show the Engineer's side as the locomotive left the JSSX yard with 2 boxcars in tow.

And one more thing...This link below is to a photo on page 64/65 in the September issue of Model Railroader, showing an extremely well done maintenance shop.  The building, the locomotive, and just look at the asphalt ! The layout belongs to Rick Sutton, who also took the photo.  I hope we'll get to see more of Rick's layout.

https://www.trains.com/mrr/how-to/model-train-layouts/a-busy-engine-shop-a-peaceful-river-crossing-a-river-in-the-steel-city-and-other-model-railroad-photos/